Shilpi Swami’s journal round-up for 9th December 2019

Every Monday our authors provide a round-up of some of the most recently published peer reviewed articles from the field. We don’t cover everything, or even what’s most important – just a few papers that have interested the author. Visit our Resources page for links to more journals or follow the HealthEconBot. If you’d like to write one of our weekly journal round-ups, get in touch.

Efficiencies and inefficiencies of the NHS in the UK have been debated in recent years. This new study reveals the performance of the NHS compared to other high-income countries, based on observational data, and has already caught a bunch of attention (almost 3,000 tweets and 6 news appearances, since publication)!

The authors presented a descriptive analysis of the UK (England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales) compared to nine other countries (US, Canada, Germany, Australia, Sweden, France, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Switzerland) based on aggregated recent data from a range of sources (such as OECD, World Bank, the Institute for Health Metrics Evaluation, and Eurostat). Good things first; access to care – a lower proportion of people felt unmet needs owing to costs. The waiting times were comparable across other countries, except for specialist care. The UK performed slightly better on the metric of patient safety. The main challenge, however, is that NHS healthcare spending is lower and has been growing more slowly. This means fewer doctors and nurses, and doctors spending less time with patients. The authors vividly suggest that

“Policy makers should consider how recent changes to nursing bursaries, the weakened pound, and uncertainty about the status of immigrant workers in the light of the Brexit referendum result have influenced these numbers and how to respond to these challenges in the future.”

Understandably comparing healthcare systems across the world is difficult. Including the US in the study, and not including other countries like Spain and Japan, may need more justification or could be a scope of future research.

To be fair, the article is a not-to-miss read. It is an eye-opener for those who think it’s only a (too much) demand-side problem the the NHS is facing and confirms the perspective of those who think it’s a (not enough) supply-side problem. Kudos to the hardworking doctors and nurses who are currently delivering efficiently in the stretched situation! For sustainability, the NHS needs to consider increasing its spending to increase labour supply and long-term care.

In economic modelling, assumptions are often made about the long-term impact of interventions, and it’s important that these assumptions are based on sound evidence and/or tested in sensitivity analysis, as these could affect the cost-effectiveness results.

The authors explored assumptions about weight trajectories to inform economic modelling of behavioural weight management programmes. Also, they checked their evidence sources, and whether these assumptions were based on any psychosocial variables (such as self-regulation, motivation, self-efficacy, and habit), as these are known to be associated with weight-loss trajectories.

The authors conducted a systematic literature review of economic models of weight management interventions that aimed at reducing weight. In the 38 studies included, they found 6 types of assumptions of weight trajectories beyond trial duration (weight loss maintained, weight loss regained immediately, linear weight regain, subgroup-specific trajectories, exponential decay of effect, maintenance followed by regain), with only 15 of the studies reporting sources for these assumptions. The authors also elaborated on the assumptions and graphically represented them. Psychosocial variables were, in fact, measured in evidence sources of some of the included studies. However, the authors found that none of the studies estimated their weight trajectory assumptions based on these! Though the article also reports on how the assumptions were tested in sensitivity analyses and their impact on results in the studies (if reported within these studies), it would have been interesting to see more insights into this. The authors feel that there’s a need to investigate how psychosocial variables measured in trials can be used within health economic models to calculate weight trajectories and, thus, to improve the validity of cost-effectiveness estimates.

To me, given that only around half of included studies reported sources of assumptions on long-term effects of the interventions and performed sensitivity analysis on these assumptions, it raises the bigger long-debated question on the quality of economic evaluations! To conclude, the review is comprehensive and insightful. It is an interesting read and will be especially useful for those interested in modelling long-term impacts of behavioural support programs.

Finding an estimate of the societal monetary value of a QALY (MVQALY) is mostly performed to inform a range of thresholds for accurately guiding cost-effectiveness decisions.

This study explores the degree of variation in the societal MVQALY based on a large sample of the population in Spain. It uses a discrete choice experiment and a time trade-off exercise to derive a value set for utilities, followed by a willingness to pay questionnaire. The study reveals that the societal values for a QALY, corresponding to different EQ-5D-3L health gains, vary approximately between €10,000 and €30,000. Ironically, the MVQALY associated with larger improvements on QoL was found to be lower than with moderate QoL gains, meaning that WTP is less than proportional to the size of the QoL improvement. The authors further explored whether budgetary restrictions could be a reason for this by analysing responses of individuals with higher income and found out that it may somewhat explain this, but not fully. As this, at face value, implies there should be a lower cost per QALY threshold for interventions with largest improvement of health than with moderate improvements, it raises a lot of questions and forces you to interpret the findings with caution. The authors suggest that the diminishing MVQALY is, at least partly, produced by the lack of sensitivity of WTP responses.

Though I think that the article does not provide a clear take-home message, it makes the readers re-think the very underlying norms of estimating monetary values of QALYs. The study eventually raises more questions than providing answers but could be useful to further explore areas of utility research.